


We Are

by LuthienLuinwe



Category: DCU, Green Arrow (Comics)
Genre: Child Death Mention, Drug Addiction, Funeral, Gen, Grief, Guilt, Mentioned Gun Violence, blame, heroes in crisis spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 03:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16297043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuthienLuinwe/pseuds/LuthienLuinwe
Summary: HEROES IN CRISIS SPOILERSBack then it had all seemed like such a wonderful idea. Flashy cars, high-tech toys, crowds of screaming fangirls…Until the lights faded and the sounds muted and the pain set in.How much suffering had Green Arrow caused? How much suffering had the entire damned League caused?Ollie is a wreck at Roy's funeral.





	We Are

**“You wash your hands. You come out clean. You fail to recognize the enemy within. You say we’re not responsible, but we are. We are. We are.”**

The world was dark and desperate. No one had known that more than Roy Harper. Life had dealt him the shittiest of shitty hands. He’d lost not one, but two fathers. He’d lost a daughter. He’d fallen into the deep clutches of addiction time and time again. And Ollie had been able to do almost nothing every damn time.

He deserved better.

It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair. Roy was getting better. He was getting better and he was going to stay better and they were going to be a proper, functioning family.

_ You’re just a junkie. _

He should have offered help. He should have done more. He should have just left Roy at the reservation and never dragged him into superheroics in the first place.

Back then it had all seemed like such a wonderful idea. Flashy cars, high-tech toys, crowds of screaming fangirls…

Until the lights faded and the sounds muted and the pain set in.

How much suffering had Green Arrow caused? How much suffering had the entire damned League caused?

Superheroes attracted supervillains. One wouldn’t exist long without the other.

And now Roy Harper was dead.

Roy was dead, and Ollie was left with a hole in his heart that he knew, deep down, could never fully mend.

Hard to put a bandaid on a wound that needs stitches.

What kind of monster trained a kid to fight crime?

_ This is all your fault. _

_ The drugs were all your fault too. _

It had hurt more than anything to see Roy, who had had such a bright future ahead of him, suffering this much. It hurt seeing him throw everything down the damn drain. It hurt seeing his boy hurt. 

It had hurt knowing Roy had been clean for years and years and all of that had been wiped away in one terrible, horrific moment.

_ He lost his daughter, Ollie,  _ Dinah had told him after a rough night when Roy had shown up at his door higher than a kite and desperate to get Lian back. And Roy hadn't been making any sense, and Ollie had no clue what to do, and he wished he could just bring her back.  _ Men twice his age with five times his impulse control can’t handle that. I can’t handle this. _

God, Ollie wished he could have brought Lian back.

He would have sold his soul to bring Roy back.

Roy with his bright smile and easygoing nature. People gravitated to him. A perfect misfit. He had his own gravitational pull, and no one could resist it.

Was that what had made him a target?

Ollie took a shaky breath and squeezed Dinah’s hand. The minister had been droning on, but Ollie hadn't been paying much attention. Roy would have laughed, told everyone to lighten up.  _ Not like it’s a funeral, old man.  _

What the hell did that stranger know about Roy anyway?

What right did any of the people there have to talk about how great of a kid he was? Hadn't they all shunned him at one point or another?

_ Didn’t you shun him once? _

He was sick and tired of it. All of it. The “Sorry-for-your-loss”es, the “he’s-in-a-better-place”s. It was all bullshit. What the hell did they know about any of that? 

They said there was no worse pain than losing a child. And staring at the casket in front of the altar in a church he’d only stepped foot in a handful of times, Ollie couldn’t help but think that they were right. He glanced around, trying to see who had come to grieve. Didn’t they know it was their fault?

Roy’s death was as much on the JLA’s hands as it was on the person’s that pulled the trigger.

Roy’s death was on Ollie’s shoulders, just like Lian’s was

Dinah was whispering something to him, but he couldn’t hear. His ears were ringing, the noises of everyone around him drowning everything else out. He wanted to snap at her to be quiet, to let him grieve.  _ She’s just trying to help you. _

_ And He will raise you up on eagle’s wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, make you shine like the sun, and hold you in the palm of His hand. _

Roy would have hated the ceremony, Ollie couldn’t help but think. The kid had always joked he’d catch on fire if he stepped foot in a church. 

At least they’d closed the casket for the funeral itself.

Seeing Roy lying there, face waxy, different but still the same, not him, not alive… It had broken something deep inside Ollie, something that was never going to be able to be fixed. Damn the morticians and their bags of tricks.

Damn whoever had taken his Roy from him.

Dinah had wanted him to talk to a doctor, medicate through the hell that was going to be the several days between death, autopsy, and funeral.

Roy would have killed Ollie for letting him be buried in a suit. A dry laugh escaped his throat, and his cheeks burned when everyone turned to stare at him, some to glare at him.  _ Never could get you to dress up when you were alive. I wanted to put you in your favorite outfit. Dinah wanted to go more traditional.  _ At least that’s what she’d said.

Ollie knew it was because the button-up shirt was the only thing that would cover the autopsy scars.

Why had they had to perform the damn thing in the first place? Cause of death had obviously been a gunshot wound.

“It’s okay,” Dinah whispered and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Ollie shut his eyes tightly and buried his face in her shoulder, not wanting to look around, not wanting to see the casket or the minister or the people who may as well have marked Roy for death themselves.

_ Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. _

_ Be not afraid. I go before you always. Come, follow me, and I will give you rest. _

Who the hell chose the music at these things? Were these songs supposed to bring comfort? Roy would have hated them. He would have wanted something happy played, something upbeat. Not… Whatever  _ this  _ was. 

Ollie opened his eyes and forced himself to watch the casket holding the body that had once been Roy out of the church. He needed to keep them separate in his head. Had to keep them separate. That waxy, still  _ thing  _ wasn’t his Roy, wasn’t his boy, his happy, carefree boy who Ollie would have done anything in the world for. 

He couldn’t help but think back to Lian’s funeral. Roy had been a wreck, an absolute wreck. Ollie hadn't understood, couldn’t comprehend.

He wished he’d never be able to relate.

Look where that got him.

None of it was right and none of it was fair, and he wished, not for the first time, that the laws of the universe would favor him, just that once.

Ollie stood with the others and filed out of the church, glad to be out in actual sunlight instead of the dimly lit building. He’d had enough of the colors reflected from the stained glass. Still, he wished it would have rained.

What right did the sun have to shine when everything was crashing down around him?

_ Cheer up, old man,  _ he could almost hear Roy saying, patting him on the back, that constant goofy grin on his face. How was it that Roy could have had all the shitty things thrown at him and still keep his sense of humor? Who the hell was going to bring light to bad situations now that he was gone?

Dinah took his hand, and he laced his fingers through hers. And to think, they still hadn't gotten to the hard part. They’d lower Roy into the ground, and he’d never come back up. Ollie would never see his face again, never hear his laugh again.

And another sob caught in his throat, and Dinah moved her hand from his and wrapped her arm around his waist instead, in an attempt to keep him up.

How could she be so calm through all of this? Roy had been hers just as much as he’d been Ollie’s. How could she act like everything was okay? How was she not as upset as he was?  _ People grieve differently, Ollie,  _ a small voice in the back of his head tried to tell him.

Fuck that small voice.

Fuck everything.

He watched the pallbearers lift the casket, and his heart dropped in his chest. He should have been among them. But how the hell was he supposed to support Roy’s weight when he could barely support his own?

Jason should have been one, but Jason had been nowhere in sight. Dick should have been one, but Ollie hadn't seen or heard from him either.

Wally would have been one, but…

Ollie shut his eyes tightly and took a shaky breath. 

Parents weren’t supposed to bury their children.

He opened his eyes again and let his feet carry him to the burial site as if he were on autopilot. For a moment, just for a moment, he wasn’t there, he was watching himself move, watching everything go on around him as if he weren’t part of it himself.

He stood by the burial plot, Dinah at his side. Someone had set up a picture of Roy, one Roy would have approved of. “Roy Harper was a good man taken too soon,” the minister started again, and Ollie wanted nothing more than to snap at him to shut up. 

What the hell did the man know about Roy? What the hell did the man know about anything?

Ollie wished Jason was there. Then at least he could get some reassurance that his boy was okay, or at least not suffering.

Even if Jason would have lied to him to make him feel better.

He could see Clark from the corner of his eye, and pure, unbridled rage coursed through his veins. It was just as much the JLA’s fault that Roy was dead as it was the shooter’s, as it was his own.

And neither hell nor high water was going to keep Ollie from making sure each and every person responsible for Roy’s death paid and paid dearly.

Another hole in the ground that could have been avoided.

Another senseless murder.

More overturned earth on top of a body that was too young to be six feet under.

At least they had the sense to bury him next to her.

Only one thought ran through his head as the minister finished the words he was spewing from memory instead of from within.

_ No more. _

No more heroes.

No more sidekicks.

No more senseless violence.

No more lives ended far, far too soon.

No more JLA.

No more.


End file.
